It’s only been a year since Kira Puru formed The Bruise, yet, already the band’s topic of discussion has centered around “
It’s only been a year since Kira Puru formed The Bruise, yet, already the band’s topic of discussion has centered around “how the hell are we going to get ourselves on the Grinderman bill?” laughs the frontwoman. Confidence? Probably. Technical skill? Definitely. Currently traveling the lonely roads of outback Australia as the musical component of the kooky Bohemian Masquerade Ball, Puru and The Bruise are having the time of their lives, as the singer reports.
“We’re touring with the whole bunch of them at the moment. It’s been pretty time-consuming but it’s also been great. Actually, it’s just cool because it’s just the kind of collective of kooks and crazies that you have the most fun with. There are burlesque dancers and circus performers and the eclectic types traveling up and down the east coast. It’s hard to describe what actually happens in the shows but it’s pretty incredible. We’ve been a segment in the musical part of the show, and there’s lots of music and cabaret and burlesque.
“The tour has been overwhelming,” she adds, “and there’s a real sense of family among the people. Working with these kinds of professionals has been very inspirational and something we’ve really soaked up while we’ve been on the road. We consider ourselves to be really lucky to be accepted on the bill because they have had some pretty impressive bands like Martin Martini.”
For those who have seen the sheer intensity of Kira Puru and The Bruise in a live setting so far, the inclusion of the band on the Bohemian Masquerade Ball makes immediate sense… Dark, sultry and sexy in vibe, sonically the band are soulful and melodic one moment and brutally hard-rockin’ the next. As Puru points out, the most accurate glimpse into the band can be found on new EP The Liar which is quite significantly removed from the self-titled debut release.
“We have a tendency to crate a bit of a ruckus when we’re on stage,” laughs Puru. “We’re a bit more misbehaved at times when we get into it… Well, the last time that we played at The Evelyn, my guitarist Geordie [Malone] couldn’t even stand up after a while and he had to lay on his back on the stage to play the guitar! It’s pretty typical, it’s about as blatantly rock ’n’ roll as you get!
“The new EP is definitely the most reflective of what we do as a band live,” she adds of the band’s new disc. “By the time we’d released our first EP, it had taken us a year to put it together, so when it came out it wasn’t really reflective of what we did anymore because our sound have evolved so quickly.
“This time we decided to get into the studio and put out something real quick so that we can capture where we’re at right now and show people what we have become since we started out! I still like the first EP but I think it’s very traditional-sounding and it echoed my taste as an artist whereas this one sounds more like us as a real band, a collective.”
Similarly enough, Puru claims she met the first member of her band, Geordie Malone, while she performed at a burlesque show on her own. The guitarist approached her about joining her band only to find that Puru was flying solo at the time.
“He just came up to me and said, ‘I wanna be in your band’,” she recalls with a chuckle. “But the thing was that I didn’t even have one, so we decided to get together and start looking for people while we did some duet stuff. We figured if we added a couple of other people we could spice up our sound a bit, so we had a double-bass player and a drummer, which worked out for a while, but as it happens, he got busy playing with Mojo Juju. So we ended up with Chas [Jagger] and we’ve been together for about a year, or maybe just a little over.
“I think,” she smiles, “we’ve done alright so far though, because our gigs average out to about once every weekend.”
And if The Liar is anything to go by, that is only set to increase in the coming months following the launch of the EP and national tour. And that’s just fine with Puru and the band who, according to the singer, “love to get loose!”
“It’s fun, it’s supposed to be fun!” she laughs. “We just want to play music and experience everything as best as we can. At the moment we’re enjoying being on the road and getting loose with the ‘Ball… but I guess it would also be nice to have a bit of a break at least for a little while after this. It would be nice to go up in the mountains somewhere and write some songs for our next release, then maybe do a couple of tours and maybe head for overseas.
“I like the accessibility of an EP,” she adds, reflecting on The Liar, “because it’s real easy to digest and doesn’t bore the shit out of people before they get to the end of it. It’s kind of like a short story versus a long novel – sure, people prefer either one, but I prefer the short story.
“An album seems to be something that the industry is catering to less and less as time goes by because people want the digital realm and EPs are more suited to the market. Besides, I just don’t think we’re ready for an album as a band yet.”
Recorded at Headgap Studios in Melbourne by The Institute’s d.a.calf, mixed by Rick Will and mastered by John Rubeto last August, Puru says the EP was quite an emotional experience – title track The Liar being best case in point.
“It’s all come from my personal experience and the people around me,” she explains. “I write about what challenges me emotionally. When I wrote The Liar I was working in a very stressful job at the time and with a lot of people who had been behaving in a way that I found unsatisfactory. My bassist was going through a horrific breakup and my own romantic life was also having some trouble – and just everything around me was fucking pissing me off! So I needed a point of catharsis and some way to sum up all the shit that was happening. Next thing we knew, we had an EP.”
KIRA PURU & THE BRUISE launch their brilliant new EP The Liar at The Evelyn Hotel this Friday October 22. They also appear at The Bohemian Masquerade Ball at The Thornbury Theatre the following night, Saturday October 23. The Liar is out now.
